Somewhere They Can't Find Us [Roger/Brian]

Somewhere They Can't Find Us: Part 2

Brian was positive that if he hadn't been suffering from claustrophobia before, he surely would have had it after spending God knew how many hours in the two-by-two metres cell he had been thrown into after having been arrested that morning. There was literally nothing for him to focus on apart from the false but frightening notion that the room seemed to get smaller with every minute he spent being locked up inside of it. There was no clock to tell how long he had been there, no window to see if it was still light outside or if the morning had already faded into a dusky October afternoon, not a single sign of guards or officers walking by to let him know that he hadn't completely been abandoned. There was nothing around to distract himself with; it was just him and his worried mind, locked away from the world in a claustrophobically small iron police cell, without a single indication that this lonely hell was going to be over anywhere soon.

Brian found himself sitting against the wall, endlessly tapping his left foot against the floor in nervousness. It made a dull, clattering sound against the steel ground of the cell that was unpleasantly loud in the silence that surrounded him, yet he still preferred listening to the headache-inflicting tapping of his shoes, of which the laces had been taken out before they had left him alone in the cell, than being confronted with the way too rapid pounding of his own heart. The sound of rubber against steel was terrible, but it was all he had to distract himself from the harsh reality of having been arrested on account of suspicions of homosexual actions.

Brian remembered that he at first had been using the hem of his shirt as a means of distraction, until he had noticed that this was not exactly beneficial to the garment. The fabric of it had literally visibly thinned out over the period of time he had been using it to let out his fear and hopelessness, to the point where he could see right through it; he had been twisting it and twirling it and pulling at it until it had turned transparent.

That was when he had realised that he had to find something else to distract himself with, and given that there was no clock, no window, no calendar, no newspaper, no anything, he had apparently resorted to tapping his foot against the floor. He couldn't remember having started doing this, though; he was way too far lost in his mind to notice his own movements. All he could think of was how locked up he felt, how afraid he was of being abandoned, and even more of not being abandoned and being taken out of this room to be dragged into the next stage of being arrested. This would be, if he remembered correctly from social studies, being interrogated, questioned by a small group of police officers, who would push you into confessing to what they thought was a crime you had committed, whereas Brian could not get himself to view loving Roger as a crime.

And that was exactly the only thing he worried about even more than about what was going to happen to him next; it was what was going to happen to Roger. He had not seen him around this place – he had been told that his boyfriend had been arrested as well, but he hadn't managed to catch a glimpse of him, to hear a word from him, or anything else that would indicate his presence. All he knew was that he was supposed to be somewhere in this same building, somewhere locked up in a similarly small isolated cell, and knowing him, he was probably even more terrified than he was himself. His poor, sweet, innocent Roger, first year university student, who had only turned eighteen a few months ago, barely out of childhood. Roger, who in essence was bright and bubbly and outgoing, but who at the same time would always immediately cling to him the moment they encountered an unfamiliar and possibly hazardous situation. And now, in the most terrifying situation Brian was sure both of them had ever experienced, he wasn't there to comfort him. The thought of Roger, crouched in the corner of his cell, skinny arms wrapped around trembling knees, crystal white tears spilling from pretty blue eyes, made Brian feel more worse and helpless than any lonesome isolation or perspective of interrogation could ever do to him.